Narrating the image: The body in selected works of Rosario Ferre, Mario Vargas Llosa and Virgilio Pinera (Spanish text, Peru, Puerto Rico, Cuba)

In Narrar la imagen, I examine the role of images in three novels: Rosario Ferré's La batalla de las vírgenes , Mario Vargas Llosa's Elogio de la madrastra and La carne de René by Virgilio Piñera. All three authors subordinate the image to writing, where a focus upon the image provides stark relief for the word.; Ferré undermines the image with her insistence on writing. She does this by parodying the ossified meanings of the Virgin to indicate alternative articulations of women's roles and abilities. By narrating images of women, Ferré inverts the norm of representing women with images and silencing women's interpretations of these representations. By excluding illustrations in a novel that centers on images, the author counters the power of the image with that of the word.; Vargas Llosa, the only author to include images in his text, emphasizes the play of interpretation by interweaving myths, histories, and canonical paintings into the narration of this novel. I analyze the play between written history, the paintings that represent this history, and Vargas Llosa's reinterpretations that incorporate both the verbal and the visual.; Piñera constructs a world with common images to later distort and reinterpret them in accord with the logic of his text. I interpret the function of these images to be an element of literary structure that reveals Piñera's approach to writing. Both these images and their presentation underline an oscillation between an obsession for close inspection and the will to distance oneself from what is discovered in this observation. The novel's images present various doubles meant to instruct the protagonist in this oscillation that applies both to self-development and to writing.; All three authors approach the image in literature as a means to proffer their own interpretations of images as well as the importance of interpreting them. Ferré emphasizes that images can reinforce an oppressive tradition, Vargas Llosa plays with interpretation to highlight possibilities of appropriating culture, and Piñera reveals narrating images to be an absurd game of signs and signifieds in which we all participate.